How It All Began: A Novel. Penelope Lively, Penguin Books, 2012.
 
Fiction Novel
 
A vibrant new novel from Penelope Lively-a wry, wise story about the surprising ways lives intersect.
 
When Charlotte Rainsford, a retired schoolteacher, is accosted by a petty thief on a London street, the consequences ripple across the lives of acquaintances and strangers alike. Through a richly conceived and colorful cast of characters, Penelope Lively explores the powerful role of chance in people's lives and deftly illustrates how our paths can be altered irrevocably by someone we will never even meet. She shows us how one random event can cause marriages to fracture and heal themselves, opportunities to appear and disappear, lovers who might never have met to find each other and entire lives to become irrevocably changed.
 
Nice condition with mild cover wear.